sparking curious mind

More and more companies are embarking the trend of mass customization. Following NikeID launched back in 1999, brands from different categories give their customers the opportunity to customize their products.

Celebrating its 130th anniversary, the H.J. Heinz Co. has created a special Web site where consumers can customize their ketchup bottle labels.

Another manufacturer that offers customization is Jones Soda, which lets you put a photo on their bottles.

One of the best-known, and probably first, example being M&M’s personalized candy, which come in 15 colors and are packaged in four 200-grams bags for $38 or 20 silver tins for $85.

I think this is a great way to get your customers involved to have a real brand experience.
Does anybody know any other examples of this kind?

At Nordiska Kompaniet's food hall customers can hook up their iPod to the iFood terminal and download audio recipes.
The process is described in five simple steps: 1) Plug in, 2) Download, 3) Purchase, 4) Listen, and 5) Cook. After choosing from a wide range of recipes and downloading audio instructions to their iPod or other mp3 player, shoppers can purchase all necessary items from a colour-coded deli area.

iFood is an exclusive cooperation between Nordiska Kompaniet/NK, an upmarket Stockholm warehouse with an equally upscale food hall, and Ridderheims, a manufacturer and distributor of fine meats and delicatessen products.

Very clever and simple example of customer engagement.

via springwise

"We’re all drowning in information today. The value is no longer in collecting or even condensing it, but in transforming it. Your edge will come, not from knowing something your competitors don’t, but in applying creative intelligence to all the available information in order to create generative, profitable ideas." - Open Intelligence Agency

"What happens when an interactive agency goes to work for SUBWAY? Late nights, fun times, and lots of sandwiches. When Agency.com has the chance to win the SUBWAY interactive business, they immediately go to work... in the restaurants, on the streets, and, of course, on the internet. Check out their viral video, send it to your friends, and help them spread the good word of, um, mustard." - Agency.com

Agency.com makes a viral video about them for a pitch for Subway account. Then they post it on Youtube before going to Subway.

The move sparks all sorts of reactions around blogosphere. Coudal even made a very funny spoof.

Is this the right move to win new business?

via Adfreak

Assessing creative ideas effectively is a combination of art and science, subjectivity and objectivity. This requires: shared agendas and honesty, a deep knowledge of what communications does and a profound understanding of the brand itself, clients recognising and nurturing a great idea, the ability to handle difficult discussions about creativity, the need to appreciate the agency’s approach to presenting work, and making informed decisions based on agency advice and experience.

Ten-stage framework of shared criteria for closer, more effective relationships:

1. Be knowledgeable in advance – assess ideas in a broader context
2. Come to the meeting with a smile – be ready to be inspired
3. Back to the brief – use brief as a framework against which to evaluate the idea
4. Empathise – with the people bringing the ideas to you
5. Clarify – is it on brief? What exactly is the idea? How is the idea going to work?
6. Question yourself – be both subjective and objective
7. Question the idea – use open questions to encourage ideas to develop
8. Reflection – listen to the agency, go away, think, ask the ‘how’ questions
9. Refinement and the role of research – these are the ‘why’ questions
10. Relax – you’ve done everything you can to help the idea survive and flourish

To download the world’s first guide for Judging Creative Ideas click here

"The proposition behind both ads has been to communicate 'Colour like.no.other'. With both ‘Balls’ and ‘Paint’, our intention is to show the depth of colour that can be taken for granted if you have a BRAVIA high definition LCD TV. We know that consumers still value colour above all else when choosing a TV set so we’re continuing to promote Sony's credentials (Live Colour Creation technology etc) in all our communication about BRAVIA."
David Patton, Senior VP Marketing Communications, Sony Europe

From an interview at If!

Also, check out the Sony Bravia blog. They give access to "behind the scenes" footage of the next BRAVIA advertising campaign, "Paint". For the making of the advert they used 70,000 litres of paint - 358 single bottle bombs - 33 sextuple air cluster bombs - 22 Triple hung cluster bombs - 268 mortars - 33 Triple Mortars - 22 Double mortars - 358 meters of weld - 330 meters of steel pipe - 57 km of copper wire.

Quite impressive!

Montreal culture jammers Rob Maguire and Ezra Winton, the cofounders of the anticorporate activist collective berculture began sharing their recipe for berbr , an all-natural hemp ale, with Canadian microbrewers as a way of spreading a message and funding their work.

Two microbreweries in Montreal and Vancouver are making the "uncorporate" beer, and about a dozen bars and cafés are selling it. The profits are split with berculture, which produces political documentaries and film festivals, and campaigns against corporate giants like Wal-Mart. Like open-source software code, the ale's recipe is free for anyone to use and modify, so long as users in turn share any changes.
To support local enterprise and cut down on pollution from shipping, Maguire and Winton want berbr to be made locally, from mostly local ingredients, wherever it is sold.



Überbr isn't the world's only open-source beer, nor is it the first. That title is claimed by Vores Øl (Our Beer), a meaty brew with a caffeine boost from South American guarana beans. The beer was created last year by a group of students at Copenhagen's IT University in a workshop on copyright and intellectual property taught by artist Rasmus Nielsen. The project applies the logic behind open-source software, which flouts Microsoft's corporate hegemony by tapping the creativity of the masses to design ever-evolving programs like the Linux operating system.

"If I am to succed in leading a person towards a particular goal, I must first find out where he is now and start from there. If I cannot do this I am deluding myself when I believe that I can help others. In order to help somenone it is true that I must understand what he understands. If I cannot do that, it is of little use that I can do more and know more.
If , however, I want to show how much I can do, that is because I am vain and proud, because I really want to be admired by other people instead of helping them. All true helpfulness starts with humility towards the person I want to help, and for this I need to understand that helping is not wanting to dominate, it is wanting to serve."
Soren Kierkegaard

This is what a planner should be about. To serve the consumer, we first must understand who he is, how he lives and so on.

Client: Guinness
Agency: BBDO / New York

The prototype of a revolutionary new type of vehicle only one metre wide specially designed for cities has been developed by a team of European scientists. The vehicle combines the safety of a micro-car and the manoeuvrability of a motorbike, while being more fuel-efficient and less polluting than other vehicles.

The CLEVER (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport) is a tilting three-wheeled vehicle that is fully enclosed and has seats for the driver and a passenger. Its strengthened frame protects the driver in a crash and the vehicle has a top speed of approximately 60 mph (about 100 kph) and an acceleration of 0-40 mph (60 kph) in seven seconds.

via TechEBlog

From Jetta Official Backseat Driver’s Manual.
Inserted in magazines, the guide, done by Crispin Porter+Bogusky, informes us that "being a backseat driver is not a right. It’s a privilege. And a responsibility.”
It also includes a quiz and an official backseat drivers license at the end.


At Brettner you can view the scans from each page.

Tres cool.

This is a little piece done by Piers Fawkes from PFSK about the omnipresent urban spam around us.



You can also download Piers presentantion - "Gathering Inspiration - Being Random"- delivered at the AAAA Account Planning Conference in Miami.

Hurry, is free until 1st of August!

Never hurt a woman's feelings. It may use outdoor advertising to get back to you.
And good copy and the right exposure it does the job.

Great and fun idea!

More logos here

Client: Volkswagen
Agency: DDB Berlin

Copy says: Maximum power. Minimal consumption. The new TSI engine

Companies strategize at the highest levels – push the marketing and communication teams to craft customer messages, invest in expensive marketing campaigns – yet employees are often the last to truly understand their company’s brand.
Companies are learning that their brand stands or falls on the internal relationship with its employees as much as their external promises to customers.

Still, many organizations fail at enfranchising their employees in their branding. They are so externally focused on the customer, and the shareholders, that they are pursued above all others, excluding the actual messenger of the brand – the employee!

Not long ago, I was at a sales training for the sales force of Coca-Cola Romania. The company just introduced two new products to the market and they organized this conference to familiarize the sales people with the new drinks. Around 900 hundred people were present, the company brought Ilie Nastase and Nadia Comaneci to deliver these motivational speeches, a well-known TV star was the host to the entire evening. They introduced the new drinks, the communication campaign; competitions among different teams were held ad-hoc. The audience was hyped-up.

My role there was to hand out these promotional objects as gifts from the company for its employees. The plan was to give a mob style hat to the guys and a feathers scarf to the girls. That was the plan. Unfortunately, when the show was over, the crowd just erupted from the venue and literally grabbed in total disorder the gifts from the boxes. It was like a herd of wild beasts running amok! In 15 minutes the place looked vandalized and we were incredulously asking each other if those were people from Coca-Cola?!

There and then I promised myself that I will never drink again anything made by Coca-Cola. I still keep my promise.

Explore and play and confuse yourself. The perfect way to while away the hottest period of the year.

Great fun with words at Uncontrollable Semantics

Click on 'play' and take it from there, in a whirl of words and colours.

Created by Jason Nelson

"Good copy also is grounded in consumer insight. Through efforts ranging from quantitative studies to consumer interviews, brand marketers and agencies must gain an understanding of consumer preferences and develop creative executions that flow from those insights.

Understanding consumers' life stages will guide informed decisions about tone, vocabulary and content. The challenge is for a brand to be courageous enough to choose a focused target audience and speak in their language, rather than speaking in a vanilla vocabulary that tries to reach everyone.

Trying to target everyone is like targeting no one."

Rob Depp, VP of client services Deskey

from P-O-P Times

Go face-to-face with the giants of advertising. Watch interviews and archival videos of the industry's top creatives and inluencers.

via Creative Classics